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The gut-wrenching decisions and night sweats every founder can
appreciate are well presented in Ben Horowitz's book,
The Hard Thing About Hard Things. He tells his dramatic
personal story of leading startups Loudcloud and Opsware through
tough times. He shows us the skills and expectations we have
for company founders as leaders, doers and modern cultural
heroes.

Horowitz’s story is the “front side” of entrepreneurship but
there is a “back side” that is seldom discussed or written about.
That makes its hazards all the more treacherous for
entrepreneurs.

The back side I’m referring to is the founder’s life away from
the company. It’s the challenging task of building a steady
financial footing, solid family relationships and staying healthy
on the shifting, unpredictable ground of entrepreneurship.

The support structures and metronomic predictability that
undergird daily life for most people are generally unavailable to
entrepreneurs. Taking your career “off the grid” as an
entrepreneur risks pressures that can reduce a founder’s personal
life to rubble.

Successful back side management, fittingly, takes desire, effort
and flexibility. It also often requires help. As a husband, dad
and founder of four companies, I don't see it as optional.
I’ve watched many beautiful front-side facades of companies and
careers crumble because the back side was poorly designed and
constructed.

Here’s a shorthand framework for thinking about what makes up the
entrepreneurial back side and how you can begin to wrap your arms
around it:

1. Goals. Company founders
are engrossed thinking who their company serves and the core
values guiding it. Most entrepreneurs never approach their
personal mission with the same sense of destiny. It’s not
optional -- you must.

2. Wallet: Are you keeping
a close eye on your personal finances? Entrepreneurs throw
nickels around like manhole covers and can squeeze revenue from
the tightest customers but they seldom apply the same discipline
to their personal finances. It’s an enormous source of
instability and stress for many company founders.

3. Collateral damage. Want to get
depressed, company founders? Google “entrepreneur divorce rate.”
The break-up of a marriage will crater a company faster than any
competitive bombshell. The children of affluent families have
their own challenges that can become a huge burden for any
entrepreneur to bear. Unless you consider how your drive to
succeed is affecting your family, you risk winning the battle and
losing the war.

4. Health. By
definition, your company wouldn’t exist without you. How hard are
you working to ensure that it won’t have to? Watch out for your
own physical well-being at least as much as every other
indispensible company asset. Your board is not granting
bonuses for having a heart attack.

5. Mental
health. Staying steady under stress when people
look to you for leadership is unbelievably difficult. Watching a
company crumble under its founder’s depression or addiction isn’t
a pretty sight. You need to manage stress in a healthy way to
stay sane under pressure.

6. Accountability. It’s all well and good
to have plans and checklists but, as Field Marshal von Moltke
observed, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
Who keeps you true to your personal vision and well-being and
doesn’t let you off easy when you fall short?

Entrepreneurs often lead remarkable lives. But those remarkable
lives require significant attention, forethought and work. But
what’s good in life that doesn’t?